Russia's veterans battle to bring back glorious name of Stalingrad

It was the scene of the greatest battle of the Second World War, where the Nazi war machine began to crumble and at least two million men lost their lives. The jewel of the Soviet industrial empire, to which Hitler laid siege in 1942, it has been immortalised in epic books, movies, and a square in Paris. And now the town of Volgograd, still considered a monument to Russian bravery and sacrifice, wants again to be named after the dictator Josef Stalin.

The town may revert to its Soviet-era name of Stalingrad, following a request to Russian President Vladimir Putin from the local Parliament and hundreds of thousands of war veterans.

The campaigners want Russia to have a referendum to decide the issue before the sixtieth anniversary of the end of the Stalingrad siege, on 3 February 2003. A change would give the town, which was defended by the Soviet Army to the cost of 1.3 million soldiers, its fourth name in a century.

'The glory of Stalingrad belongs to all Russia,' said Vladimir Andropov, vice-chairman of the Volgograd regional assembly.

'We want to get back the name for the sixtieth anniversary of the great battle ending, as an act of respect to the memory of millions who died in the fight against Nazism. Stalingrad is a world symbol of the victory of mankind over the Nazis, and we want to immortalise their heroic deeds, not the memory of Stalin.'

The Volgograd Parliament will vote on 26 December to send a formal request to the Russian State Duma, or Parliament, and to the Kremlin, for the name change.

Volgograd was originally called Tsaritsyn, after the Tsarina, Catherine the Great. During the civil war in 1918 that followed the Bolshevik revolution, Stalin helped secure victory in a key battle between the Communist Red Army and the tsarist White Army. The town was renamed in Stalin's honour, and rebuilt to house a massive tractor factory, and important parts of Russia's industrial complex. Hitler decided the city was vital in his attempts to shatter the Soviet military machine, and decided to lay siege in September 1942.

German General Friedrich Paulus began a major offensive to capture the whole town on 14 October. Yet the Russians were too well dug in and the Germans were caught up in nightmarish urban warfare.

Stalin seized his chance, and his forces broke through the poorly defended German flanks, and encircled the quarter-million-strong Sixth German Army. The German soldiers were forced to eat the corpses of their horses, and their morale and numbers were eroded. Despite Hitler forbidding Paulus to surrender, the general and his last troops gave themselves up on 3 February 1943. More than 90,000 German troops were taken prisoner. Only 7,000 made it back to Germany after the war.

It was the worst loss of life in one battle of the war, and the turning point for the Nazis. The Soviet Army then marched on to Berlin.

The move to rename Volgograd comes at a time of increasing nostalgia for the 'great' times past of the Soviet Union. The fiftieth anniversary of Stalin's death is on 5 March next year.

Professor Yuri Zhukov, a history professor specialising in Stalin's rule, said: 'The world knows Stalingrad as the place from where the Nazi military machine began to crumble. But few people in the world know what 'Volgograd' is.

'Russians are disappointed by life today and their hopes for the future, so they begin to look more to the past for reassurance.'

War veterans want the change to commemorate their fallen comrades. Yuri Nekrasov, chairman of the Regional War Veteran's Committee, said: 'This is not about Stalin, but about a town entered in world history as Stalingrad.'

During the 'de-Stalinisation' after Stalin's death, the town was named Volgograd, as Russia tried to forget the horrors of Stalin's terror.

The names of many Russian towns have changed as the tide of adulation for fallen leaders has receded.

During the presidency of Boris Yeltsin, Leningrad was renamed St Petersburg, and Gorki, named after the Soviet sycophant writer, was renamed Nizhni Novgorod.